Bernie Masters is a geologist/zoologist who spent 8 years as a member of the Western Australian Parliament. Married to Carolina since 1976 and living in south west WA, Bernie is involved in many community groups. This blog offers insights into politics, the environment and other issues that annoy or interest him. For something completely different, visit www.fiatechnology.com.au for information about vegetated floating islands - the natural way to improve water quality.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Historic event or a fraud? Critical thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

Historic event or a fraud?
Critical thoughts on the Paris Climate Accord

By Saral
SarkarPosted
Monday, 11 January 2016

Considering
that so much depends on whether global warming can be arrested soon, it was no
wonder that all thinking people had turned their attention to Paris, where on
13th December the COP21 "successfully" ended, with great
jubilation. I too followed the process through the media.

Positive
and Negative Reactions

A day
after, I read the following comments: "Today is a
historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris,
politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement". And "It's a fraud really, a fake,"…
"It's just bullshit…"1 The first was made by May Boeve,
the US national organizer of 350.org,
a big NGO, that is playing a leading role in the climate justice movement, the
second by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, considered the father of
climate change awareness. Which one can we regard as the correct assessment?

Given
that nobody in my position has the time and energy to read all the reports and
comments on the COP21, I hope that my readers would forgive me if I have
overlooked some important point in the agreement or an important comment on it.
But fairness demands that I also mention a middle position, for example that of
Thomas Friedman, a liberal columnist of the New York Times. He wrote:"I
had low expectations for the U.N. climate meeting, and it met all of them –
beautifully. I say that without cynicism. Any global conference that includes
so many countries can't be expected to agree on much more than the lowest
common denominator."

That is
understandable. As far as I could follow, nobody had big expectations. But then
I do not understand how May and other prominent people of big NGOs can be so
enthusiastic about it. Bill McKibben wrote: "With the climate talks in Paris now over, the world has
set itself a serious goal." I have doubts. Was the goal
really set seriously? Friedman wrote: "But the fact that the lowest
common denominator is now so high [he means the target 1.50 Celcius]
– a willingness by 188 countries to offer plans to steadily and verifiably
reduce their carbon emissions – means we still have a chance." Again
I have doubts. I would very much like to agree with Boeve, McKibben, and
Friedman. But at present at least, I cannot, for reasons I shall present below.

Why Call
it a Fraud?

I too
think, like Hansen, the accord was a fraud, but for reasons very different from
those of his. I think it was only because they were afraid of being branded as
the guilty in case the COP21 failed to reach an agreement that the major CO2
emitter countries reluctantly decided to sign this very weak paper. But paper,
as the Germans say, is patient. If you want evidence, then look at the position
with which the government of India went to Paris. Only a few months before the
COP21 began, the government of India had announced the policy decision to
double India's coal production in the next 5 years. Just a few days before he
left for Paris, Mr. Javadekar, India's environment minister, had said in an interview: "I'm asking the
developed world to vacate the carbon space so that we can park our
development."

Retorting
to US Secretary of State John Kerry's criticism of India's decision to double
its coal production, Javadekar had remarked it was "absolutely unfair and
unacceptable," especially since the CO2 reduction targets
announced by the developed countries would fail to arrest the climate change
crisis, which they had a historical responsibility of fixing after a century of
pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.He also warned the Americans against
"bullying" India.

Or take
the case of Norway, very rich in oil and gas. Just twelve days after they
signed the Paris accord, the prime minister of the country said:"We
believe that in a situation in which we shall have attained the goal of Paris,
there will be demand for Norwegian oil and gas."

So they
are continuing with all the plans and projects for extracting oil and gas from
the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. While claiming that they want to protect the
Arctic from the effects of global warming, they are speculating on the melting
of the arctic ice that will make more access to oil and gas possible. It seems
they are saying (in German): Wasch mir den Pelz aber mach mich nicht nass, or
(in English): We want to eat the cake and have it too.

These are
actually irreconcilable positions. We can formulate them as two most
fundamental controversial questions:

(1)
Should the underdeveloped countries be allowed to develop their economies to
the level reached by the USA or Germany?

(2) And
must the economies of the developed countriesbe scaled down, in order to
vacate the carbon space in favor of the former?

In Paris,
these questions were probably not put on the table in these stark terms. In the
interview referred to above, Mr. Javedkar, while asserting India's right –
implicitly the right of all underdeveloped countries – to development, did not
raise the second question. The Paris accord too recognizes all underdeveloped
countries' "right to development". It "… aims to strengthen the
global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable
development and effortsto eradicate poverty, … " (Article 2). But it
does not mention the second question.

It
appears that all participants in COP21, the big and small environment NGOs,
publicists, and activists take it as a matter of course that the answer to the
first question is Yes, and that to the second is No. The controversy was just
papered over. It is simply taken for granted that a deus ex machina,
namely technological development, would enable humankind to solve the problem
of global warming without causing any pain to anybody, and that it only
needs some more time and large investments in renewable energies and
efficiency-raising technologies.

In the
rich, developed countries, a large part of the hope of technology optimists is
placed on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, although not even
its feasibility has yet been established. Bill Mckibben, founder and leader of
350.org, charts the strategy for the coming years. The state(s) must do
the following:

You've
got to stop fracking right away … . You have to start installing solar panels
and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies
doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to
renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon
steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it.

And he
lays down the task of the movement as follows:

There can
be no complacency after the Paris talks. Hitting even the 1.5C target will need
drastic, rapid action. Think of the climate movement as personal trainers – for
the next few years our job is to yell and scream at governments everywhere to
get up off the couch.

The most popular
article of faith of environmental NGOs and activists (not of governments) is
that – given the right policy decisions such as those laid down by McKibben in
the above quote, and correspondingly large amounts of state subsidies – it
would be possible in two to three decades to meet 100 percent of humanity's
energy needs by means of renewable energy technologies, so that burning fossil
fuels would not be necessary at all; there would also be no need for the CCS
technology.

Hansen
calls the accord a fraud, mainly because he sees no concrete action plan in it,
only promises that, moreover, the signatory states are required to implement
gradually, beginning only in 2020. His idea was a tax or price or fee of $15 a
tonne of CO2 to be paid by major emitters. He argued that only this
measure could forcedown CO2 emissions quickly enough.
But he found no support, not even among big environment groups, because, as he
said, nobody wants to scare people off by talking off new taxes.

I could
have supported the tax proposal of Hansen if he had stopped there. But, like
the others mentioned above, he too believes that ultimately it is only by
replacing fossil fuel energies with clean energies that we can avert climate
catastrophes. For he says in the same interview: "We need to have a rising
fee on carbon in order to move to clean energy."

Unlike
Hansen, I see the fraud taking place since long, and it is contained in the
very conceptions of the proposed solutions – in all parts thereof and both in
their short as well as long-term versions. Firstly, the whole COP process from
the very beginning, i.e. since 1992 onwards, is swearing to promote sustainable
development and eradicate poverty while at the same time
protecting the environment and averting global warming. The COP21 did the same.
Otherwise the developing countries would not have taken part in the process.
But how do you, in the short term, eradicate poverty in developing countries,
e.g. in India, South Africa or Colombia, if you make power much dearer by (a)
imposing a tax of $15 a tonne of CO2 payable by major emitters (that
includes India), (b) by ending all subsidies to fossil fuels, and (c) paying
huge subsidies to renewable energies (where will the huge sums come from)?

Most
persons, groups, parties etc. mentioned above simply assume that
economic growth i.e. growth in prosperity can and will continue without any
problem when the fossil fuel energies have been replaced with "clean"
energies. As against that, I (and my political friends, e.g. Ted Trainer)
believe since long that it is absolutely necessary that the major industrial
countries, including China, India, Brazil etc. purposely bring about a contraction
of their economies – in order not only to stop burning more and more fossil
fuels but also to reduce the generallevel of environmental
pollution. We do not think that economic growth would be possible if we really
want to save the biosphere. I can also cite evidence supporting this belief: In
recent history, the only time CO2 emission and general environmental
pollution went down in a large region were the 1990s, i.e. after the Eastern
European economies, especially the then second biggest economy of the world,
that of the Soviet Union, collapsed. But in the Paris accord there is no
mention of this necessity. The whole de-growth movement has been totally
ignored, also by the big environmental NGOs. They simply believe in miracles.

One may
ask why I doubt that it would be possible, if not soon, then at least in the
near future or in the long term to fully or at least largely replace fossil
fuel energies (and other nonrenewable resources) with renewable ones. After
all, technological progress is taking place all the time! Basing myself on
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's differentiation between feasible and viable,
I have been expressing this doubt for the last 25 years. It is not possible to
repeat all my arguments here; interested people may read some of my writings. Here I only want to
refer to two sets of facts that serve as indications that my doubt may be
justified.

Already
in 1994, Eurosolar and its friends and associate organizations claimed in a
full-page advertisement in the German print media that solar energy based on
the technology developed till then could compete with fossil fuel energies. But
today, after twenty more years of research and development, we see that solar
energy is still neither competitive nor viable without large subsidies. That is
why even today new coal-fired power plants are being built? India is very rich
in sunshine and wind. Still its government wants to double coal production in
order to supply energy to the masses. Why? And why do its politicians say, it
is only coal that India has for energy? Are the Indian engineers stupid or
ignorant? Or have they all sold away their conscience to the coal lobby?

Protagonists
of green growth, i.e. growth based on 100% transition to renewables are all
very intelligent people. Yet they are ignoring these facts and questions. If
they are not intentionally bluffing, then they are, I believe, suffering from
an illusion.

There are
some more reasons why I criticize the big environmental NGOs.

(1) They
– unlike Hansen, who has called the whole agreement a fraud – have exonerated
the political class (the authors of the Paris Deal) from all guilt, as if they
are not always ready to fulfill the wishes of big corporations, as if they are
actually good people who, like the NGOs, care for the interests of the masses,
the only "villains" being the fossil fuel industries. Opposing these
villains are, in their view, the good "ordinary people", the hundreds
of thousands of demonstrators, as if they do not want to consume more and more
energy and other products of fossil fuels. This is too naïve, if it is not a
fraud too.

(2) They
have isolated the climate crisis from all other crises involved in mankind's
present predicament, as if they are not interconnected. They simply ignore the
totality of the crisis.

(3) They
do not seem to know that the $100 billion that the politicians of the rich countries
have promised to pay to the victims of global warming will first have to be
generated by producing more green house gases.

(4) It
appears, moreover, that they have not noticed that these are all only promises.
Don't they know that governments, especially in times of economic crisis, never
deliver what they promise? The UNHCR, for example, recently reduced the food
ration to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan etc. because they haven't
received all the money that was promised to them.

But the
more basic problem I have with those who are euphoric about the Paris accord is
that the signatory governments as well as the NGOs, green and left parties etc.
do not even mention the real and deeper causes of the ecological,
economic, political and social miseries of humankind, of which climate change
and large-scale migration are just currently the most glaring manifestations.
These real and deeper causes are thecontinuously growing demands, aspirations
and ambitions of a continuously growing world population, while our resourcebase is continuously dwindling and the ability of nature to absorb
man-made pollution is continuously diminishing – in short, the lunatic idea
that in a finite world infinite growth is possible.

Is the
System Question Irrelevant?

What I,
moreover,found very strange is that, all along, all people involved in the COP
process assumed that the envisioned drastic changes in such a vital factor as
the energy supply base of the modern industrial economies could be undertaken
without requiring any changes in the current political-economic system.

Of
course, one could not expect from the politicians who signed the deal that they
would include in it a clause stating that the system they have built up and
which has made them rich and powerful also needs to be changed. But how come
also the rest of the involved people did not have the slightest doubt that the
huge problem can be solved within the framework of capitalism and free
market economy? Outside this circle, however, in the context of the problems
at hand, the system question had already been posed several hundred times, in
speeches and writings, before the COP21 began. In TV news broadcasts, I have
even a few times seen pictures of radical leftist protesters carrying banners
and placards with the slogan "System change, not climate change".

Can't one
expect of honest and thinking NGO and media people that they also at least
consider the possibility that the technological breakthroughs – 100%
renewable energy, CCS etc., on which they are placing all their hopes – do not
occur or do not occur in time? If they do not occur, shouldn't one have a plan
B for averting the catastrophes? In plain English, if humanity can no longer
indulge in the growth compulsions inherent in capitalism with its principle of
competition in a free market economy, shouldn't the state(s) step in and
order a stop in further economic growth? Shouldn't the state(s) then
tell the people that they have to accept a contracting economy and all
the consequences thereof? Shouldn't the state(s), from then on, plan an orderly
withdrawal from the present mad economic system?

Unfortunately,
many people who do raise the system question – there are even some prominent
people among them – often do that half-heartedly. They often question
"capitalism as we know it or as it is today" or "globalized
neo-liberal capitalism", as if a better form of capitalism is
conceivable, as if it could be made ecological, social or humane, and
compatible with economic contraction. I do not think such half-hearted
critiques are of any use. Such people do not realize that as long as the motive
of profit maximization and the principles of private ownership of means of
production, selfishness, and competition remain – and these are the most
essential elements of capitalism –, there would always be a compulsion to grow,
whatever that may cost human society and nature. That will bring to nought all
efforts to overcome the climate crisis and many other crises.